Inara Pey

Narrative doesn't have to be long-winded . Look at WoW's successful "celeb" campaign a couple of years ago - that contained 30-second stories on its own. Again, I'm not suggesting SL goes down that particular route. But there is no reason why even 2D advertising cannot carry a more appropriate story than that of boobs'n'bikinis, particularly if linked into a broad campaign, such as utilising video (which the Lab have used in the past, although how widely / effectively is really hard to tell), and then linked-back through the likes of the What Is? web page. The narrative can be as much in the way everything is strung together to draw people into SL and help them on the way to engagement with the platform as it can be in the ads themselves.

I've spent three years saying that the Lab needs to look at narrative marketing as a vehicle for marketing and promoting SL. If they needed any more proof as to the power of the the approach, they need only to look more broadly at Draxtor Despres' The Drax Files. Not, I hasten to add, that they should necessarily go the same route with 5-minute in-depth video "infoverts", but rather that they have a wealth of broad-based community-driven and use-driven stories that could be woven into a rich narrative of linked marketing opportunities. There's a much broader issue here than simply promoting SL. There is the entire relationship between promotion and then bringing people to where they (might) want to be in SL. Leaving aside the tackiness of something like the bikini ad or the narrow focus of the vampire ad, there is no actual narrative flow from such ads to the sign-up process through to arriving in-world. In this respect, marketing actually touches upon the entire new user experience, as Tateru Nino once observed: Crafting an effective new-user experience for Second Life starts long before the user logs in for the first time. The Second Life viewer user-interface is not the most important part of a new user’s story And to take a leaf out of Dusan Writer's pages of wisdom: the Lab really should hire anethnographer.

Thanks, Kylie!

It's a little late in the day, but if people still need help / for future reference the Lab has provide a couple of FAQs to go with their recent requests for account information / tax information e-mails / blog posts. The Lab asked me to help spread the word, so I've got the details on my blog (with, at the time of writing, a corrected link). The details can be found here.

At the risk of necroposting, if anyone is still having concerns / problems with tax and account information, the Lab has now issued a couple of FAQs. Details are here.

Jo Yardley wrote: It is weird (but not surprising) that LL is not doing very well communication wise. That is something the new CEO really has to work on. As for who the new CEO should be, I reckon it should be someone with experience in the field and who knows how to run a company like LL, perhaps Will Wright from The Sims? Either way, this new CEO should select 20-30-50 people who are "extreme" SL users. People from all walks of life who have different experiences but who are actual current users who know whats going on from the inside. Will Wright was (until recently) on the board of directors of Linden Research. I'm not sure when he departed, but his name is now gone from the Leadership page.

Reeva Hax wrote: I've furnished the information required being a Non US Resident to the satisfaction of Linden Labs Did you provide the ITIN number in the W8Ben form? (edit for spelling) Several people conacted me on the matter of W-8BEN and the EIN / ITIN requirements. I in turn contacted the Lab on the matter. As far as their requirements are concerned, neither an EIN or an ITIN is required. Users only need to complete section #1 through #5 of the form. You can see the Lab's response in full here.

Bondboy Dagger wrote: Hello I too noticed this feature being gone. I created a ticket to inquire and have been told this feature has been discontinued. ( I can further confirm it's official, as I've had a short statement from Pete Linden at the Lab.

Medhue Simoni wrote: Aw crap! This can't be good! Some1 should tell them they can't have Land Impact as an option in Search, cause we don't even have an option for that in the listings. I'd also like to see them redo the inworld search, rather than the MP search. Ummm... You can indicate prim count in a listing, which is equitable to LI. So the search option is possible; so surely it's more a case of inconsistent (outdated) terminology used within parts of the MP.

Pamela Galli wrote: Thank you, Inara. It would be so easy for them to just ask for feedback. I mean, I know of at least two threads about the bug, and JIRAs have been filed. I am glad someone can get their mail read by someone at LL. Careful Pam. You're asking the Commerce Team to use the "c" word. You know, "communications".

I contacted Peter Gray at the Lab on this matter and received the following reply: Hi Inara, Thanks for your email. We'll be adding the below to the blog post on this topic momentarily: Thanks to reports from Merchants, we have discovered a bug in the system that determines whether an account has payment info on file. We are working now to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and expect to release a fix in the next couple of weeks. In addition, we have had some questions about the 5-day age requirement for accounts trying to become Merchant accounts. This requirement is not new, and there are no current plans to change it. best, Peter The comments now appear to have been added to the original LL blog post, and I've also blogged on the update as well.

Dorn, I wrote an overview back when the project was starting to roll forward at the end 2012, which you may find useful (and which appears briefly in LL's video on the subject!). Please keep in mind the project has rolled forward since then, but the core information is still valid. Most maintained third-party viewers already handle server-side baking, and those which are maintained and currently don't, will support it shortly. I also have a transcript of those responsible for the project answering questions when appearing on Designing Worlds which may also help, and where another new project from the Lab - Materials Processing - is explained. Note also that "Server-side baking" has been known by a number of names: originally "avatar baking", then "server-side baking", and most recently. "server-side appearance". So if you hear any of these terms, they amount to the same thing.

As others have commented here, and I've covered via blog reports, LL are understandably being cautious in the SSB/A deployment. It's a fundamental (and highly visible, if something goes wrong) change to SL, and as such needs thorough testing of the kind which isn't available via Aditi (as there simply isn't the volume of avatars there to be representative of a genuine load / stress test on the composite service / servers). Hence why the deployment - even if it is only a server-side configuration change, rather than a simulator code change - is being approached slowly. As it is, the initial "closed beta" testing on two "TPV-only" test regions on Agni has already revealed a potential issue people using a non-SSB/A enabled viewer may encounter when regions start being "switched over" to the new service (see SUN-74), and which I've also reported on. The Lab have only just been made aware of this issue, so we've yet to see how it affects their thinking As the original plan was to initially switch a representative number of regions over to SSB/A for a more public stress-test prior to "flipping the switch" across the entire grid (or possibly scaling-up the number of regions which are SSB/A enabled gradually prior to finally "flipping the switch"), this issue would suggest the Lab will be looking at both it and plans very hard before they determine the best way forward.

Qie Niangao wrote: Do we think the vehicle sim-crossing problems were associated with the interestlist changes? It could be; I honestly don't know. Over the past seven years that I've been in SL, the intervals during which vehicles could reliably cross sim borders have been so brief that I've rarely noticed. There were region crossing issues resulting from interest list changes, vis: As originally deployed, the interest list code (as you know) only updated the viewer with information relating to objects within the camera’s field-of-view. When crossing a region, the camera position was extrapolated first, with any vehicle the avatar was attached to being created "behind" the camera in the region just entered. Because of this, the interest list code considered the vehicle to be outside the camera's field-of-view updates for the vehicle ceased - hence problems with vehicles ending-up "snagged" at crossings. HOWEVER - this particular issue was fixed in week 12. Whether the interest list code is in any way responsible for further vehicle crossings is debatable. I've no idea one way or the other (which isn't actually saying a lot, I know! ).

Thanks for the clarification

From the Magnum release notes: 13.05.04.275247 This is preparatory work for the Experience Keys project Scheduled 2013-05-08 for RC BlueSteel, RC LeTigre, and RC Magnum Changes since 13.04.19.274370Removed changes introduced by Second Life Server 13.04.12.273874 So no support for the new AO capabilities at all until such time as they are re-deployed?

As others have commented, this is a known issue, and the Lab are working on a fix. Commenting on the situation at the last SL Simulator User Group meeting (Tues May 1st), Andrew Liden said: We think maybe it is fixed in a new viewer. But this new viewer I mention happens to be very crashy, so we haven’t opened up the source code for it yet nor have we submitted it to our QA team since they’ll just crash … This is the viewer that goes with our new interest list changes which I mentioned a few weeks ago and people were wondering when the code would be put up on a public repo. ...So we're all going to have to wait a little while longer for the fix to emerge. In the meantime there are a number of ways to work around the issue: Right-click on the space where you know prims are missing (useful if you're somewhere you're familiar with and / or the missing prims are fairly obvious by their absence) Using CTRL-SHIFT-R to toggle wireframe on and then off Toggling Atmospheric Shaders off / on via Preferences > Graphics (or via Phototools if you use Firestorm and use Phototools via the toolbar button)

Alicia Sautereau wrote: Ophellia Rodenberger wrote: It seems that BlueSteel and LeTigre got downgraded to 13.04.05.273550 on Wednesday. I can't find that mentioned anywhere. Is that intentional? Now this makes me really curious if it happend because all my previous problems have pretty much dissapeared by magic Internal ddos? I pinged Maestro on this after noticing the BlueSteel and LeTigre release numbers while flying over Blake Sea / Nautilus. He replied: "Ah yes. There was an error during the roll, so a slightly older version (which doesn't include the changes from this week's main channel update) was deployed."

The Fantasy Faire website is at: http://fantasyfairesl.wordpress.com/ Teleport URLs are top right, however: Fairelands Junctions - main teleport hub Crimson Fields Evensong Woods Lotus Valley Dream Lumenaria Magnificat Ravenshard The DragonSpire Titans Hollow There is also the Valley of IshNar, but this is a part of an in-faire hunt, and not fully open at the time of writing.

WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote: Just to add, the server-side code for SSB is apparently something they can switch on or off without a restart. So it might need an RC test, but it might not be switched-on on the whole RC. Since there's some complications with how an SSB-capable viewer responds to moving back to old-style baking, I hope they're careful about just which regions are switched on for testing. Unlike Physics, last year, this potentially messes up everyone. While it is a configuration change which doesn't necessarily need to go via that the RC channels (and Oz Linden's most recent comments suggest that LL are leaning in that direction, indifference to previous comments from Nyx hinting at a progressive switch-over), whether or not an actual restart is required when the switch is thrown is still unclear. When asked about it at the TPV Dev meeting on Friday 19th April, Oz was uncertain, and I missed the opportunity to ask Nyx about it at the CC meeting on Monday 22nd.

Server-side baking is on the way, but won't be arriving across the grid this week. Ther viewer-side code has yet to appear in the SL release viewer, and it will be accompanied by a period of testing on a constrained number of regions before the switch is thrown. Firestorm (and other TPVs) are releasing viewers with support for the new baking service now in order to ensure that as many people as possible update to SSB-capable viewers ahead of the switch-over, so as to avoid them ending up seeing "grey people" around them. Viewers supporting the upcoming new capability will work with the existing avatar baking mechanism until such time as the Lab "throws the switch". In the meantime, as others have pointed out, the release notes for the main channel and LT / BS RCs are up on the wiki; hopefully, Magnum's notes will follow.

Maestro has posted specifics: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Deploys-for-the-week-of-2013-01-21/td-p/1837633

RC will be getting updates - although which gets what is still TBA, so keep an eye on this sub-forum for official details. According to Simon / Andrew, the planned updates include: Interest list code, with a fix for the crash mode bug which caused the stability issues last week Threaded region crossing code A fix for the Magnum search issue(s) There is also a further bug fix for the current maint-server release, but details on it weren't forthcoming & Simon feels it is doubtful it'll make this week's release, as it has yet to clear QA.

Ayesha Askham wrote: Sorry to moan, but while I know there is a good reason why there is no Main Server Roll this week..in fact there are 2 (good reasons), Martin Luther King jr day yesterday and some chap taking an oath somewhere(!), we have no Roll announcement today at all. When will the RC rolls be announced? After last week's fiasco on the RC's, what will be the set-up this week? I know someone is bound to say "win some, lose some", but LL's recent odds have not been good. Also textures have been slow to rez today and baking is slow to nonexistent. It is NOT my ISP, so what is bugging the central servers this week? "Our three good reasons are..." ' BluesSteel and LeTigre were rolled back * Magnum had assorted issues of its own which may still be under investigation. "...ok.. Four. Our FOUR good reasons are...." (Sorry couldn't resists a Monty Python reference ). Attempts at levity aside, will endeavour to find out more at today's Simulator UG meeting.

I did blog about this in more detail on Thursday, but in updating a number of blog pages, forgot to hit the PUBLISH button. Silly me. The details are now available here.